Why do people blame the Catholic Church for the inquisition, but they don't blame the Atheists for the Gulags

Question

Anyway the Gulags were concocted by Atheists-.

Answer 1

Pope John Paul II blamed the Catholic Church for the Inquisition, apologized, and asked forgiveness.

There is no "atheist" equivalent to the Vatican. Take up The Gulag with the Soviets.

Answer 2

The Inquisition was an office of the Catholic Church. The Gulags had little to do with Atheism and were a function of Soviet Totalitarianism.

Answer 3

The Inquisition was an official function of the Catholic Church. There is no central Atheist authority, so if you want to blame certain atheists for the gulags, be my guest. Just don't lump me in with those murderers.
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Answer 4

While you are correct that Soviet Communism was atheistic, it is not really just to blame all Atheists for thier crimes.

Modern historians have long known that the popular view of the Inquisition is a myth. The Inquisition was actually an attempt by the Catholic Church to stop unjust executions.

Heresy was a capital offense against the state. Rulers of the state, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw heretics as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath.

When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig. It was not easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. The lord needed some basic theological training, very few did. The sad result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent judge of the crime.

The Catholic Church's response to this problem was the Inquisition, an attempt to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges.

From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.

Most people tried for heresy by the Inquisition were either acquitted or had their sentences suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ. The underlying assumption of the Inquisition was that, like lost sheep, heretics had simply strayed.

If, however, an inquisitor determined that a particular sheep had purposely left the flock, there was nothing more that could be done. Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense, not the Church. The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule.

Where did this myth come from? After 1530, the Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth. Innumerable books and pamphlets poured from the printing presses of Protestant countries at war with Spain accusing the Spanish Inquisition of inhuman depravity and horrible atrocities in the New World.

For more information, see:
The Real Inquisition, By Thomas F. Madden, National Review (2004) http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp
Inquisition by Edward Peters (1988)
The Spanish Inquisition by Henry Kamen (1997)
The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction, By Marvin R. O'Connell (1996): http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0026.html

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

The Atheists aren't responsible for the GULAG as a whole - the Communists of Stalinist Russia are.

Using that logic, you ignorant fiend, why don't people blame the Catholic Church for the Holocaust? After all, Hitler was Catholic.
The inquisition is all most child's play considering the war crimes committed with the inhumane death of six million Jews.

Answer 6

the government created gulags. communism by Marx was never supposed to be used the way the soviets did it.
the catholic church can be blamed for alot more than the inquisition. the holocaust, the crusades, the witch trials, raped children, just to name a few.

Answer 7

maybe because the catholic church was responsible for the inquisition and the communist government was responsible for the gulags?

just a wild guess.

Answer 8

In response to several above answers: The Communists, officially atheistic, have executed numbers estimated to amount to several tens of millions of their fellow countrymen throughout the 20th century in Ukraine, in Russia, in other regions of the former Soviet Union (under the Bolsheviks, under Stalin, and his successors), in Hungary, Germany, the former Czechoslovakia, and the other former "Iron Curtain" countries; in China (under Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and successors); in Cambodia (under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the Killing Fields), in North Korea, in Vietnam, and elsewhere.

In Cambodia alone, "Estimates of the number of dead range from 1.7 to 2.3 million out of a population of around 7 million" according to Wikipedia.

The actual number of victims will almost certainly never be known.

Certainly it would be wrong and unfair to blame atheists across the board for these atrocities. I do not blame atheists, and I would not support anyone else blaming them. However, the simple fact remains that these Communist regimes have been uniformly officially atheist - and intolerant of any religion - in their orientation.

To many, Communism represents "Organized Atheism."

Answer 9

Atheism isnt a religion, the Catholic Church is.

Answer 10

I don't know ..... one had religion agenda, the other had political agenda .... now, in what way atheists are to be blamed? Just because some perverted communist says so?